NPR:

How many times per year does a gun go off in an American school?

We should know. But we don’t.

This spring the U.S. Education Department reported that in the 2015-2016 school year, “nearly 240 schools … reported at least 1 incident involving a school-related shooting.” The number is far higher than most other estimates.

But NPR reached out to every one of those schools repeatedly over the course of three months and found that more than two-thirds of these reported incidents never happened. Child Trends, a nonpartisan nonprofit research organization, assisted NPR in analyzing data from the government’s Civil Rights Data Collection.

We were able to confirm just 11 reported incidents, either directly with schools or through media reports.

In 161 cases, schools or districts attested that no incident took place or couldn’t confirm one. In at least four cases, we found, something did happen, but it didn’t meet the government’s parameters for a shooting. About a quarter of schools didn’t respond to our inquiries.

“When we’re talking about such an important and rare event, [this] amount of data error could be very meaningful,” says Deborah Temkin, a researcher and program director at Child Trends.

I want to be very deliberate and careful here in how I analyze this report.  First of all, good for NRP for the research.  Perhaps they’re capable of good reporting after all if they push their politics out of the way?

Second, I have never argued, nor do ever intend to argue in the future, that school shootings, or the lack thereof, proved anything at all or justified gun rights.  Similarly, I have never argued, nor do I ever intend to argue, that negligent discharges in the home are justification for gun lockup laws, or that Chicago inner city shootings are a justification for more gun control, or that the lack of shootings in a gun-rich locale are reason for believing that gun rights reduces crime.

I do not argue that way about things dictated by the Almighty, and my right to self defense and the amelioration of tyranny is based on His Holy decree, and is not function of other data or the vicissitudes of men or the machinations of politics.  But what we do learn from this report is that there are no limits to which the controllers will go to ensure that their agenda reigns supreme.

Lies are merely a tactic.  The ends justify the means for those who have no scruples.